Cut emotional baggage out of your life

There a lot of ways to be good to your heart.

 The physical aspects, of course, are important. Eating right, exercising, and getting regular check-ups can add years to your life, and improve the quality of the years you do get. If nothing else, getting a new model is nearly impossible (and costs a lot of effort and trouble even if by some miracle you do manage it).

But there are more subtle ways to take care of your heart. Stress can also take years off your life, forcing your heart to do a lot more work than it would normally have to. Some stresses can't be avoided – work and bills, for example – and we're forced to turn to de-stressing techniques from yoga and meditation to taking long, relaxing walks and thinking about the positive elements in your life. 

One of the best de-stressing techniques, however, is surprisingly simple. We're taught from when we're young that we should just cope with emotional stress, powering our way through sadness and swallowing anger or worry. Men aren't supposed to be allowed to cry, and women aren't supposed to make a fuss. Adulthood, we're always told, is about growing up and just accepting the mess that life sometimes insists on shoveling at us.

But just swallowing our emotions causes its own level of emotional stress on our hearts. If nothing else, it can lead to one of those awful moments when we "snap" – suddenly screaming at a child, spouse, co-worker or other driver over some relatively small infraction. Often, moments like that happen as the result of a bunch of tiny stresses, piling one on top of the other until the entire load becomes overwhelming.

We hear a co-worker's comment and let it eat at us, or we second-guess a decision we made until we drive ourselves crazy. Recognizing those smaller moments and working through them rather than letting them eat at you, can do wonders for lowering your overall stress.

The best way to do this is to talk through your feelings with someone you trust. If it's a problem with a co-worker or a family member you can go straight to them, but even if you're not ready for that another friend can sometimes help you get a different perspective on whatever happened. Someone outside the situation can always see it more clearly, and without the emotional coloring that you inevitably feel. And even if they can't give insight on the situation itself, there's pretty good odds that they'll say something that can make you feel better.

(It's important to find someone who respects your feelings, though. Having your emotional reaction be completely dismissed will only increase your stress, as well as your chances that you'll punch whoever dismissed you).

No matter what anyone says, being an adult doesn't mean it's your job to carry around unnecessary emotional baggage. Talking your feelings out, rather than just suffering through them, is one of the best gifts you can give your heart.

Book Corner: "Once Upon Two Kingdoms"

“Once Upon Two Kingdoms” by Ana del C. Dye

Synopsis: 
An arrangement made when Elizabeth was just a babe ties her to someone she has never met, never spoken to, never loved. Now she desires freedom—a way to choose her own path—her own husband. The moment Elizabeth meets Patrick she knows he is her soul mate. But when you are bound to a crown how is any choice your own?

As a longtime fan of Hallmark Channel original programming, there’s a part of me that’s an absolute sucker for all of the classical romantic tropes. The accidental meeting, an arranged marriage that leads to a love match, a healthy amount of swooning and pining … it’s like the best kind of literary comfort food.

Reading “Once Upon Two Kingdoms,” the latest book by award-winning author Ana del C. Dye, is like enjoying a heaping plate of some of my oldest favorites. If you like your good guys great, your bad guys satisfyingly evil, and a happily-ever-after as sweet as honey, this is the book for you.

Elizabeth, the story’s heroine, falls more into the traditional “princess” gender role but still shows off plenty of spunk. Patrick is courtly in all the ways we want princes to be, and the duo’s romance hits all the right notes. I particularly like when the two first lay eyes on each other – I’m a sucker for meet-cutes that involve weaponry, however briefly – and a nicely dramatic moment near the end. (I’d tell you more, but the last thing I want to do is spoil the book for you.)

Though the setting is general medieval – princesses, etc. – Dye never lets herself get bogged down in period details. She has a good, simple style, where everything that’s going on is easy to understand and the emotions of the characters are clear at all times. The story offers a smooth, easy read from beginning to end, just the right kind of book to devour in a single afternoon.

“Once Upon Two Kingdoms” is available through Dye’s website, www.anadelc.com. 

Protecting our tough, fragile hearts

When we’re young, we think our hearts are indestructible.

We throw ourselves headlong into everything, without a thought for caution, sense or what might happen next. We date the boy who dropped out of high school to become a “famous rock star,” despite the fact that he wouldn’t know the first thing about getting an agent. We date the girl who is “too good for us” and knows it, and we spend every cent we have trying desperately to keep her attention. We tell our friends all our secrets, never imagining that we won’t be speaking to each other in just a few years.

We’re just as reckless when it comes to our physical health. Heart attacks are distant, imaginary things, as impossible to comprehend as depleted energy and failing bodies. We chow down on our triple cheeseburgers with gusto, joking about how we can “hear our arteries clogging” as we eat. Heart attacks are the things that kill grandparents, not us, and though we’ve heard the term “stroke” we’re not even entirely sure what it is.

We demand all this from an unassuming little organ about the size of a human fist, a tough but fragile thing that ancient Egyptians used to believe was the seat of the soul itself. We not only ask it to keep our bodies going for generations, far longer than we’d expect any human-built engine to keep working, but we insist on such things without giving it a second thought. As if time, or those triple cheeseburgers, won’t touch it just because we believe it won’t.

But when we get older, we realize that nothing is indestructible. This is especially true of our hearts, which never entirely rid themselves of all the marks we leave on it. We’re never quite the same person we were after falling in love with entirely the wrong person, whether it’s a lesson learned or a scar that never quite heals. Sometimes, we see ourselves differently. Other times, it’s harder to fall in love again. Even if we’re stronger in the end, we don’t bounce back in quite the same way we were before.

On a physical level, though, being careless with our hearts doesn’t just “work out in the end.” It’s said that each heart only has so many beats in it, a finite amount of strength it has to push the blood through abused arteries. The more we make it do in our reckless youth, the fewer beats we’ll have when we get old enough to appreciate them more. When we realize that time won’t just spin on forever, so we have to cherish every second we have.

The problem is, we can’t go back and grab all those heartbeats we wasted when we were younger. Faithfully taking your blood pressure medication and losing weight when you’re 40 can extend your life, but think how much further you could extend it if you lost that weight at 30. If you got a nice chicken sandwich instead of that triple cheeseburger, and maybe walked to places that were nearby instead of always taking your car. Maybe you could even put down those cigarettes and give those nicotine patches another try.

Hearts can break. Hearts can stop. We should all learn to be a little more gentle with the ones we’re given.